Thank you for your request for an update on the number of Short-Term Radio Restricted Service
Licenses (‘RSLs’) awarded each year, and a breakdown of how many of these receive a licence for
AM broadcast, FM broadcast up to 1 watt and FM broadcast above 1 watt. We received your request
on 13 June 2013 and have considered it under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (‘the Act’).
In response to your request, the number of Short-Term RSLs awarded from 2010 are:

2010 - 337
2011 - 321
2012 - 286

However, the information you have requested with regards to the break down is not readily accessible as a considerable amount of time would be needed to locate, retrieve, identify and extract any relevant information from our off-site archive. Section 12 of the Act provides that a public authority is not obliged to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the “appropriate limit”. The appropriate limit is set out in the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004, and is, for Ofcom, £450. That sum is intended to cover the estimated costs involved in determining whether Ofcom holds the information requested, identifying, locating, retrieving and extracting the information from any document containing it. The Regulations provide that costs are to be estimated at a rate of £25 per person per hour.